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Managing Stress

It's no mystery that stress is a part of our lives from time to time. And sometimes, it's more prevalent than others. As someone with a type A, always wanting to do everything at 110% kind of personality, I tend to create more stress than needed around certain things.

Alas, I've managed to find myself in some pretty stressful states lately. Last week I was feeling so stressed out that I was having headaches, got breakouts on my face, and feeling some tightening in my chest.

With two classes, 30 hours of work, running, and trying to have some semblance of a social life, I know that the next few months will be taxing no matter what. As a result, I'm looking at ways to stay happy and healthy during the peaks and valleys because I know I have to take care of myself first and foremost.

I'm curious, what do you guys do to combat stress or prevent added stress?

Comments

I am glad you are finding little ways to help you manage the stress. Running was always my primary form of stress relief, so when that was taken away from me this spring during what was the most stressful period of my life due to the move and CFA studying, I really really really struggled. I tried to find other ways to take care of myself, like making time to read and not making any social plans so I didn't feel stressed about balancing studying and a social life (not that that was tough to do since I had very few friends). I also booked a couple of massages this summer because those are so soothing for me and my life really lacks physical touch these days (sounds weird to say, but is true) so those seem to help me as well.

Can't wait to see you a week from today!! I hope the trip to Chicago is good for you. I imagine putting another marathon behind you will help as it's one less thing you HAVE to do since you can go with the flow a bit more with running!

One of the things I've found very helpful in combating stress is combining the things that make me happy, when possible. Best example is I have been getting together with a girlfriend once a week to go running together. We don't run particularly fast or far and we don't get a ton of time to catch up, but that weekly 45 minutes of face time is far more than we'd schedule if wanting to get together under different social circumstances.

Honestly, I have found really changing my mindset about things over the last few years has helped me the most with combating stress. Part of it is doing regular yoga for the last few years but a lot of it has been constantly reminding myself that so many things we/I tend to get stressed over are just honestly not worth it.

I truly believe that stress is SO SO SO bad for our bodies. Worse than eating badly or not exercising even. So when I start to get really stressed about something I try really hard to adjust my mindset and look at what's bothering me in the grand scheme of things. Usually it's really not as stressful as I'm making it out to be. I also apply the 10 10 10 rule a lot. Will this matter in 10 minutes? What about 10 months? 10 years? That also helps me put a lot of stuff in perspective.

I wrote a post about this based off the stress class I teach. You can find it here: http://journeyauthentica.blogspot.com/2012/11/stress-prevention-management.html But lately, I hear ya lady, and I'm not even doing as much exercise as you routinely do! But lately I'd say my go to stress coping strategies: food, sleep, running, time w the dogs, limiting social & other commitments, nightly organization, and time management in a big bad way.